Literary Devices refers to the typical structures used by writers in their works to convey his or her messages in a simple manner to the readers. When employed properly, the different literary devices help readers to appreciate, interpret and analyze a literary work. Below is a list of literary devices with detailed definition and examples.

Project Look Sharp provides lesson plans, materials, training and support to help teachers integrate media literacy into their classroom curricula. English language learners can view the material as well to learn about U.S. and world history as well as to hear famous speeches made by political leaders.

Facing History and StoryCorps provides lessons about American history and social issues designed to promote critical thinking skills, empathy and tolerance, and a sense of civic responsibility. In addition to the link to “(Re)building Classroom Commuity Post-Election” below, the site also offers the posts and topics:

English language learners: Have FUN while you learn from this site’s interactive games and activities using real-life situations. If you like this English in Life site, please share it with your friends!

This document is an excellent reference source for learning how to connect thoughts, subjects and statements together in speaking and in writing. It offers a list, which can then be used with an English language learner’s dictionary to find out how to use them correctly!

Hurray! For those of you who struggle with making sense of English when it’s spoken too quickly, this video series offers suggestions that should help you! The reason it’s so difficult for non-native English speakers to follow conversations and speech when it isn’t slowed down so you can hear every word clearly is precisely that: The words AREN’T said in the way you learned them! They are shortened and sometimes not said at all in order to “bunch” phrases together so that they can be said in roughly the same amount of time. For example, English speakers say these two sentences in the same amount of time:
1) “The boyrodehis bike.” (Spoken like: *”Th’BOY//RODE//’is’BIKE.”)
2) “The little boy always rode his bike.” (Spoken like: *”Th’ldl’BOY//aweys’RODE’//is’BIKE.”)*Not using phonetic symbols. The // represents a syllable in English. The capitalized words should be stressed and the ‘ shows where are joined together and read as one word instead of two or three.

Hopefully,the description above explains why it is difficult to follow spoken English when it is spoken quickly. The video series will offer you strategies to making sense of such speech!

In addition to English standard and dialect language families spoken around the world, visitors to this site can find out extensive information about the Germanic, Romance, Slavic, Celtic, Andean, Mapudungun and Malakula language families as well! The website is a database platform, so you can research how languages are spoken in various places of the world in numerous different ways–and hear, see and download information the information on this site for free!